San Diego isn’t the first city to lose an opera. It’s not even the first this year.

Opera Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada, went under in January, and Wednesday’s announcement about the company here ceasing operations makes it almost a dozen that have collapsed in the past six years amid tough economic times and sweeping cultural changes affecting audience habits for all kinds of art, entertainment and media consumption.

In some cities, nothing has risen from the ashes, but in others, new opera companies formed, or smaller, existing companies expanded their offerings. Symphony orchestras added one or two opera productions to their schedules.

“For us, the idea was to give opera fans somewhere to go, something to keep people interested,” said Brendan Cooke, part of a group who formed the Baltimore Concert Opera when the main opera there went bankrupt in 2008. “We were able to be the Irish wake for those mourning what we’d lost.”

Opera, which has been around for more than 400 years, is best known for large productions in large theaters, an especially expensive art form. Whether it will still be here in another 100 years depends on how production companies and the cities they’re in react to the changing times.

For San Diego, it might be instructive to see what’s already happened in other places.

San Antonio

When the San Antonio Opera shut down in early 2012, a replacement was in the works: The Opera San Antonio.

A subtle change in name, but a big change in approach.

Opera companies typically rely on wealthy donors for most of their revenue and count on ticket sales to make up the rest. If the seats aren’t filled, there’s a hole in the budget. Do that enough times and eventually you go broke.

In San Antonio, the idea is to get 100 percent of the funding before a single ticket is sold, said opera founder and president Mel Weingart. Then any money from the box office goes into reserve.

“My point is, if you have to hustle for money, you might as well do it before the production instead of after,” he said. “I’m too old to go begging after the fact. I’d rather beg before and try to interest people who support what we are trying to do, which is improve the cultural life of the city.”

The opera has hired as its artistic director Tobias Picker, the respected composer of such works as “An American Tragedy” and “Therese Raquin,” who told the web site Incident Light, “Companies are trying to figure out a way to get people to come back. I don’t think repeating Carmen, Boheme or Butterfly will bring them back.”

Said Weingart: “We realize that there is a certain segment of the opera-going public that will always love top-ten favorites. There’s also a growing segment of the population who are very, very interested in contemporary works. We have to be very selective in what the mix will be.”

The Tobin Center, a new $200 million performing arts center, is set to open in September with the opera as one of the resident companies. Its largest theater will seat about 1,700 people, small by traditional opera standards. But maybe better suited to today’s financial realities.

Weingart said the initial plan is to do three productions a year, two or three performances per production. “We’re taking things slowly, trying to do this in as financially conservative a way as possible. We have to be flexible, not stubborn. I’d rather have two sold-out performances than three or four that are 60 percent full. The goal is to have the audience furious that we haven’t done more.”

San Antonio also has a smaller chamber opera, Opera Piccola, founded two years ago.

Cleveland

After the main opera in Cleveland suspended performances in 2010, its board of directors commissioned a task force to recommend what a modified company should do to survive.

Perform small-scale productions in small venues, it said. Use local talent. Partner with other arts organizations.

All that sounded a lot like what was already being done by Opera Per Tutti, a small company that was started in Cleveland in 2006.

“People are very resistant to change but I do think that what we’ve formulated is going to have to become a model for the future,” said Andrea Anelli, founder and director. “It’s sad because I love the grand opera — the bigger the hair and the costumes, the better.

“But if we have to sacrifice to keep this art form alive, to me the trappings should be the first thing to go. The beauty of the music, the truth of the storytelling — that is what will draw today’s audiences to the work.”

Opera Per Tutti (Italian: Opera for All) does shows in outdoor gardens that draw 1,500 people. It sings in bars. It performs in churches, schools, on stages floating in water — all of it geared toward a kind of singer-listener intimacy that brings people back, Anelli said.

“What is our ultimate goal? It’s to have opera around for those who are interested now, and those who will be interested in the future,” she said.

Cleveland has another company, Opera Circle, which started about 18 years ago and provides more traditional offerings in small halls. Music conservatories and the Cleveland Orchestra also do occasional opera performances.

“Losing the opera was a blow to the Cleveland community, but they’ve bounced back,” said Julie Henahan, executive director of the Ohio Arts Council. “They found a way to move on and continue to get opportunities to experience that art form.”

Baltimore

Baltimore is a town that traces its opera roots to a visit by a traveling company in 1752. So when the Baltimore Opera dropped its curtain for the last time in late 2008, it hurt long and hard.

“I still mourn the company,” said baritone Brendan Cooke. “It was a wonderful place to sing and it gave me great opportunities.”

Cooke and some others created the Baltimore Concert Opera, which is to staged opera what theatrical readings are to plays. A small number of singers stand on a stage in the historic Garrett-Jacobs Mansion — no sets, no costumes, just a piano for accompaniment — and do their thing.

“We believe that opera should be available as an art form everywhere and that if we do not take an active role in building audiences, this art form could disappear in front of us,” the company says on its website.

A half-dozen other companies also sprang up, proof that Baltimore is an opera town. Not all of them survived, but among those that did is Lyric Opera Baltimore, the closest thing the city has now to a traditional, large-scale company. It performs in the same theater the Baltimore Opera used.

It does a few productions per season, led by artistic director James Harp, the former artistic administrator and chorus master for the Baltimore Opera.

Cooke, who in addition to being artistic director of the Baltimore Concert Opera is general director of OperaDelaware, said the key to survival is both financial and artistic: finding enough money to pay the bills, and finding the shows that will bring in new audience members to supplement an aging core demographic.

“I refuse to believe there’s not an intersection to be found between fiscal responsibility and compelling artistic production,” he said.

He feels San Diego’s pain, perhaps more than most. At OperaDelaware, he had to cancel a production of “Il Trovatore” planned for May because of financial difficulties and now is part of an effort to “reinvent and re-imagine” the company.